


Airing Things Out

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:47:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22383577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "Not too terribly long after Jack’s reborn as the spirit of winter, it’s been a rough year. He’s been lonely and miserable, and the harvest was terrible, so food’s been scarce. Easter rolls around, and Jack goes out to watch the egg hunt, maybe to cheer himself up a bit. To his surprise, the kids miss a lot of the eggs, but they pack up and go home, and he’s been hungry a lot lately, so he’s not going to let them go to waste. He starts hunting around for them himself, and he’s just gotten one or two when Bunnymund shows up.Jack’s excited cause, hey, free food AND someone to talk to, it’s pretty much the best day ever. Maybe he starts chatting at Bunny, all, “Hey, you remember where you hid these things? No, wait, nevermind, it’s actually kind of fun looking. I’ve got it.”Bunny is LIVID. Turns out there’s another egg hunt scheduled here for the afternoon. …oops...[cut for length]"My fill is basically just what the prompt says, though it does include some talk about why Bunny would react the way he did. Also, the egg is just an egg, because while I can forgive an an anachronistic egg hunt, chocolate was not produced in solid form until the 1800s.
Relationships: E. Aster Bunnymund/Jack Frost
Kudos: 103
Collections: JackRabbit Short Fics





	Airing Things Out

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 10/23/2015.
> 
> Here's the rest of the prompt: "+10 Bunnymund yells at him/runs him off.  
> +50 Jack’s hopes get lifted and dashed to smithereens, merrily laughing in the face of what Easter’s supposed to stand for.  
> +100 Jack gets home and realizes he still has an egg, forgotten during the argument. Even though he’s feeling guilty and indignant and kind of crushed, he’s still hungry and he eats it anyway.  
> +200 He had a little chocolate egg, too. It’s his first time having chocolate and he LOVES it, and somehow that just makes everything worse.  
> +500 Post-movie scene addressing this incident in some way."

“All right. Your turn.” Bunny grimaced at Jack. “You’ve always got worse ones, I hardly want to hang around myself after the stuff you bring up. And then _I_ remember it, too, so I know you’re not just making stuff up to embarrass me.”  
  
Jack chuckled. “Yeah, all you’ve had to bring up for a while now is blizzard after blizzard after blizzard. Sometimes it snows in the spring, Bunny! Sometimes your work isn’t going to be just a walk in the park.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah. Well, go on.”  
  
Jack tilted his head as he looked at Bunny. He never really relaxed when they had these conversations, always looking like he was ready to bolt even if that wasn’t literally the case. But it was Bunny that had suggested the exchange in the first place. And he’d said he was determined to stick with it until everything was aired out. He hadn’t said what he thought would happen once they brought up everything that they thought the other should apologize for, and gone through the whole explanation/apology/forgiveness process for all of it, but Jack had a few ideas.  
  
“So. 1716. I’d only been a spirit for a couple years. After an egg hunt, I noticed the kids had missed a lot of the eggs. I started collecting a few, because I was starving—it had been really difficult for me to get anything to eat for a while—and then you showed up, and I was so glad that I could talk to someone, and then you just yelled at me and drove me off. I guess there were supposed to be more kids coming that way later, though it didn’t seem likely that they’d find every egg either—I managed to leave with just one egg.”  
  
“Ah, no,” Bunny said, placing a hand over his face. “The last detail makes it all the worse!”  
  
“Well, I’m really curious to know _why_ , now.” Jack rested his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, a comically intent expression on his face.  
  
“Right. Right. Let’s unpack the whole thing. Got to try to defend myself, first. Anyway. You know now that you don’t need to eat, right?”  
  
“I mean, eventually I reached that point—do you mean I never did? But I got so hungry!”  
  
“It’s habit from being a mortal,” Bunny said. “Even if you didn’t consciously know you’d been one—that’s my guess. But that time you’re describing, I thought you were like any other spirit out there, and that you knew you didn’t need food, that you were just being greedy, and, also…that you were powerful enough to really throw a wrench into all of Easter if you wanted.”  
  
“You were scared of me? But why? I was…nobody!”  
  
Bunny raised his eyebrows. “Nobodies can turn out to be somebodies pretty fast among spirits, yeah? All right, think of it this way. Have you ever heard of anyone stealing the presents North brings for kids?”  
  
“No way!” Jack said. “North talked to me about Guardian stuff like that—with me, the same kind of magic means that no one will ever get seriously injured if I’m with them—but there’s some magic that makes absolutely sure that the right gift gets to the right kid. Because it’s _their_ wonder within the gift that North is giving along with the toy—it’s not for anyone else. Anyway, I think that anyone who tried to interfere would either fail right away, or, if it looked like they were succeeding, would really quickly wish they had a whole herd of nightmares chasing them instead.”  
  
“That’s about the shape of it,” Bunny said. “But what you apparently don’t know is that it’s the same for the eggs I hide. Every kid finds the right one, and each one has a hope just for them in it. So. When I saw you at the egg hunt, I saw you messing up one of the most important and magical things I do, and you didn’t notice a thing. Too right that freaked me out. I was gobsmacked when a little bluster sent you on your way, and that, as far as I could tell, all the eggs had survived.”  
  
“But…they didn’t.” Jack looked at Bunny curiously. “I had that one egg. I ate it. I still remember how it tasted.”  
  
Bunny grimaced. “The only way that could have happened—the reason you didn’t notice any protective magic—is that you were actually a child that was part of the egg hunt, according to the magic. I obviously didn’t know that, and I messed up big time—all I can say is if I or any Guardian consciously knew everything our magic did, we wouldn’t be quite so easy to talk to. But. That’s how it was. There was hope in that egg for you, and you were meant to have it. I just couldn’t recognize it. And I’m sorry.”  
  
“Huh.” Jack leaned back on the grass. “This one turned out to be a lot clearer than I thought. I forgive you.”  
  
“Thanks,” Bunny said.  
  
After a few moments of silence, Jack spoke again. “Does this mean that your magic still considers me to be a child? I don’t remember exactly how old I was when I died, but the way I—I mean, after 300 years, I don’t really appreciate that.”  
  
“Have you found any of my Easter eggs in recent years?” Bunny asked.  
  
Jack shook his head.  
  
“Then, no. Or at least probably not. My conscious thoughts can affect how it works sometimes. And, well, you’re a Guardian now. That’s a good reason for me not to think of you as a kid.”  
  
Jack hoped it wasn’t the only reason, and wondered if Bunny could tell, and how many more incidents they had to talk through before he would mention it if he did.


End file.
